


no amount of careful planning

by animediac



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Homesickness, M/M, Magical Realism, Non-Linear Narrative, i would say canon compliant but that would be a lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22798780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animediac/pseuds/animediac
Summary: Very few know that Junhui is under a curse.
Relationships: Wen Jun Hui | Jun/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 2
Kudos: 54
Collections: ENFANT D'ÉTÉ - ROUND 1





	no amount of careful planning

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [how to make an old fashioned](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8874760) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



> this fic was written for the enfant d'ete/summer child fest aka the junhui loving fest! many thanks to 1. the mods for running this wonderful event, and 2. shreya, my wonderful beta, for putting up with me and this trainwreck of a project! my prompt was S151 and while i didn't completely adhere to the theme suggestions, i hope the prompter likes my take!
> 
> for the 6 months i spent on this, i hope that it pays off. junhui and minghao are very close to my heart and i hope that i did their story justice, even if it's not quite reality. thank you for giving me and them a chance!
> 
> if you're interested, the fic playlist can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5TDeVUz2wTzCxtWNzfydIS?si=3zrJkXHgSV6E-wPV-RY6Bg)!

_When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune._

— Albert Camus, ‘First Man’

The air in the dorm is starting to taste stale when Minghao asks Junhui to sneak out to the practice rooms with him.

Junhui is more than happy to comply, dodging Seungcheol when he emerges from the bunkroom carrying a sour mood. Junhui doesn’t blame him. It’s been a long day.

Escaping the cramped dorm isn’t hard on nights like this, the rest of the boys too dazed to register or care about someone sneaking out. That said, Jisoo offers a wave as they pass him in the hallway, propped up against the doorframe of the bunkroom, polka-dotted socks stretching out into the hall. Junhui gives him a tight smile in response, shoving his feet into worn trainers, passing Minghao his coat with practiced ease.

The rest of the group will exist in silence for the rest of the night – there’s well-worn evidence to prove it. When Junhui closes the door behind the two of them, there’s nothing to suggest life beyond the threshold, silent but for the humming of the washer.

It’s not yet winter, but the air’s cold enough that when they make their way down the stairs, they’re the only ones on the street. Junhui waits a second for Minghao to catch up – the two of them have never been able to match pace. Junhui is too hasty, trying to reach his destination as fast as possible, while Minghao has always been more measured, calculating his every action. It’s a good thing Junhui doesn’t mind waiting.

The company studios aren’t far from the dorms, a failure on the company’s part to keep teenage trainees from sneaking in at inopportune times of the night. It is, however, a blessing for those never satisfied. There’s a chime when Minghao fumbles to fit the keys into the lock, a click when they do, echoing in the darkness of the hallway. Junhui lets Minghao step into the room first, before slipping in behind him.

They don’t turn the lights on immediately – Minghao drops his bag by the door, Junhui places his water bottle and phone in front of the mirrors, which reflect little with the absence of light. Some moments don’t need illumination; sometimes it’s okay to keep the lights off a little longer. 

There’s always been a level of safety in the practice rooms, Junhui thinks as he sets up the speakers. It’s odd – surrounded by mirrors, there’s nothing to face but yourself. But blur your vision with overwork and adrenaline, dim the lights, and all you can see is the wooden floorboards. 

It’s a place out of time, somewhere the outside world can’t touch. ‘ _Leave everything at the door,’_ his coach used to tell them. ‘ _This is not the place for weakness.’_

Junhui doesn’t remember who said it, wushu, acting, dance coaches blurring together in his mind. The sentiment stands though, memory clear and thick even when the bass begins to pump out of the speakers. No place for fear.

It’s a place for failure tonight though. Junhui’s fucking tired, and the fact that every time he tries to go over this step he trips over his own feet isn’t helping his mood.

 _Twist, step, switch._ Rinse and repeat, ingrain it into your memory as you tread it into the floorboards. _Twist, step, switch._ Junhui’s certain it’s carved into his bones, twisting choreography patterns like tattoos on the soles of his feet.

 _Twist. Step._ Fall-

“I can’t get it.” It comes out as a sigh, resignation heavy in his voice. “This is ridiculous.”

“Well it’s not like it matters anyway, right?” Minghao says, frustration mutual, a tinge of bitterness to his voice. If Junhui tried to bite it, it would taste like lemons and anger. “It’s not like we’re going to debut.”

Junhui stops trying to make _practice makes perfect_ come true. The track ends.

No one’s ever said it out loud. No one _wants_ to say it out loud, which makes it all the more taboo. But Minghao says it like it’s an undeniable truth, and in a way, it is.

“I don’t even know what it is,” Minghao starts, Korean abandoning him; he stumbles over the words, picks himself back up in lilting Mandarin, hardened by his words. “I don’t know what it is that keeps stopping us.”

It’s an odd feeling, to look at someone and feel nothing but guilt. Junhui has nothing to give but apologies in response.

“I’m sorry,” Junhui mumbles, and his words drip in shame.

“Why are you apologising?” Minghao’s switched tracks, head tilted in confusion, rather than anger. “This isn’t your fault.”

“It _is.”_ It’s harsh, and bitterness seems to be the taste for tonight, thick in the air, thin in the bloodstream.

“I’m nothing but bad luck,” Junhui hisses at Minghao, who’s standing by, helpless. “I’ve cursed this entire fucking group.”

–

It starts like this: Junhui is eight when he breaks his arm. The pain is searing when he moves, throbbing when he’s still. He whimpers in pain, pressed up against his mother, his opposite hand tracing the lines of the hard, plastic chairs in the emergency room. Shoulder to wrist, the only relief from the pain is the piece of candy that was stuffed in his mouth by a passing nurse.

The sterility of the air stings his eyes and nose, making Junhui wince and turn into his mother’s side to breathe in the scent of her perfume, heady and floral. It’s comforting in a way, the smell taking him away from the horrible reality of the emergency room. When he looks up from her sweater, her face falls, and she moves to thumb away the tears welling up and landing on Junhui’s cheeks. “Does it hurt a lot?”

Junhui doesn’t even realise he’s crying until he raises a hand to wipe his tears, and the pain shooting up his arm makes him sob again. The tears come out freely in big, fat drops that dampen the grass stains on his jeans, and his mother tugs him to her side to quieten him with reassurances until the doctor comes to steady his arm in white plaster, thick and heavy.

When they get home, Junhui’s confined to home for a week, with his arm bound to his chest in a sling, a prescription for pain medication, and an order not to climb any more trees. On the third day, the television starts to get boring ( _Black Cat Detective_ can only entertain for so long), and Junhui tunes in to his parent’s conversation in the kitchen instead. It’s muffled through the walls, but audible if he stretches over the armrest, rest be damned.

“You didn’t hear? They’re closing the park”

“Really?” The surprise is clear in his dad’s voice, and Junhui feels it too, a pang of upset, wondering where he and the neighbourhood kids will play now.

Apparently finished cleaning the stove, Junhui’s mom comes in with rice cakes on a plate, placing them back on the coffee table.

“They’re apparently cutting down all the trees to make a residential complex,” she calls back to his dad, her gaze shifting to Junhui’s arm.

–

“Shit!”

There’s a worrying grating noise from beside Junhui when Soonyoung bends down to fiddle with the water dispenser, plastic cup in hand.

“What did you do?” Junhui asks, bending down with protesting muscles to look at the limp, hanging tap of the water dispenser, snapped clean from the tank. The tap is still dripping, and Junhui presses a palm underneath it to collect the droplets.

“Nothing! All I did was touch it,” bemoans Soonyoung, and it still astounds Junhui that the boy can only speak like he’s won the lottery, or he’s discovered the entire world has decided to conspire against him. On some days, both.

The rest of the group has scattered over the meeting room in the few minutes they’ve been left alone – Seungkwan is lying face-down on the desk with Hansol leaning against the back of his chair as Seungkwan complains about sore arms from practice; a group is huddled in the corner, whispering; and he’s pretty sure Mingyu is asleep in the corner, a brief moment of respite.

“You have to have done _something_ ,” Junhui admonishes, teasing. Casual, informal – he hasn’t had a same-age friend in so long, and it’s relieving to drop the difficulties of polite speech. From where he’s kneeling on the floor, Soonyoung grins before joking:

“How do I know it’s not your fault?”

White plastic. White bones. Both break so easily under pressure, no different to Junhui.

 _How do I know it’s not your fault?_ It is.

Soonyoung starts swearing as the water starts pouring from where Junhui’s hand has slipped away from the water dispenser, streaming out onto the ground, and the commotion draws the attention of the other boys.

When Junhui looks up from the carpet (grey, spotted, stained from too many dropped coffees) after being pushed out of the way, he spots Minghao, leaning against the wall with arms crossed over his chest protectively. Junhui’s gaze skips away in favour of looking at the broken dispenser when Minghao’s gaze shifts to him.

The water’s started to flood the floor where Junhui took his hand away, and Seungcheol has hurriedly taken over from Soonyoung to try and stem the flow of water with paper towels. The water level in the clear tank is steadily dropping from beside Junhui, and he watches as it pours onto the floor and Seungcheol’s sleeves. When he looks back up, Minghao hasn’t moved, eyes still fixed on the situation and Junhui.

Junhui finds the scar on his arm with shaking hands and runs short nails over the raised skin. The water starts to pool under his sneakers.

Minghao keeps staring.

–

It’s raining on the day Junhui leaves the hospital with his arm free from the cast, droplets collecting on the tips of his eyelashes and falling onto the pale skin. The scar is soft and puffy where it runs from his wrist to his elbow, and it doesn’t hurt when he pokes at it with a finger. His mother tugs his hand away from it with a reprimand, and he drops his arms to his side.

A clean break, his doctor called it. A clean break, his mother calls it.

A clean break, Junhui thinks, severed from his home as he leaves Shenzhen in a taxi.

Beijing is busy and sprawling – the people move fast, and the traffic moves even faster. It’s no different in theory to Shenzhen, two sides of the same coin, blurred cars and fuzzy lights, but it’s terrifying in its unfamiliarity. Junhui barely avoids being clipped by a cyclist before his mother pulls him back, heels stumbling over the concrete. He finds his mother's hand in the folds of her dress, searching for comfort, and the scar on his wrist rubs against her bracelet.

When he looks up from the dizzying trail of traffic, she’s crying.

In time, Junhui will learn how to comfort someone over grades, over a sprain, over the delaying of his dream. But he’s still a child, and children are just learning how to react to tragedy.

Junhui’s always had a heart three sizes too big though, so he grips his mother’s hand tighter and helps her to lug all their bags up the stairs of the apartment building without complaining once.

The apartment is quiet – while the traffic outside is a constant drone, it’s a reprieve from the constant screaming Junhui’s been dealing with for the better part of two years, his name tossed between the mouths of his parents and their lawyers. Here, apartment empty, nothing in it but dust and the thick smell of cleaning products, there’s nothing left of that.

The new covers give a puff of dust when Junhui sits down on his new bed. His new room feeds off the new lounge and the new window faces the brick wall of the new neighbouring building. It’s strange, in somewhere that is almost an exact copy of their old apartment, for everything to feel so different.

Change is an unnerving thing – everything is normal, and then it isn’t, and you have to shape yourself around that. Junhui’s adaptable though, his mother says, hand on his arm as they sit in the waiting room of a talent agency. “You make places your own,” she tells him as the next kid gets called in, “You know how to settle.”

Junhui knows how to settle, but not how to let go. Unfortunately, that’s the part he’s had to get used to the most.

Home is something fleeting, he thinks; it’s right there in front of you, and then someone takes it away. It would be easier, far easier, to never get attached. To stay, but never develop roots. Because it is far less painful for everything to change when you’re not having parts of you ripped away.

But Junhui’s always had a heart three sizes too big, and attachment comes with the territory. When the man in the studio smiles at his attempts at acting, compliments his mother, hands them a folder that she immediately swipes, Junhui plants a seed.

When his mother smiles at him as they’re leaving, an image of days long gone, it starts to rain, dampening the soil.

The rare smile is almost worth his mother’s dismay when they get home to find she’s lost her wallet. A frown replaces it as she fumbles through her handbag, coins jangling as she digs around. “I must’ve put it down somewhere while you were auditioning,” she says, painted lips curving innocently around the words, and the most delicate sense of blame settles deep into Junhui’s bones.

–

The boys beside Junhui are born for the stage. It bleeds from every pore, visible in the work they put in and the results of that.

However, right now the stage is far out of reach. The four boys, tentatively titled ‘Performance team’, are currently collapsed in the common room of the company building, spread over the couch and floor. Soonyoung is bemoaning the (attempt at) blonde his hair has become, and the other three are too exhausted to say anything in response. They’re all varying degrees of shattered, on a scale of ‘I feel like my bones are made of jelly’ to ‘I think I’m dead.’ The mutual suffering they’ve just gone through with the company choreographer builds a sense of connection they’re not unaccustomed to, one that brings all the trainees together.

 _Born for the stage,_ Junhui still thinks, looks around at the others. Soonyoung, despite his whining, has an entire identity built on performing, aptitude for dance dripping off him like honey. Chan, barely a teenager, fills the stage with a charisma and talent that’s incomparable. He dances like he was made for it, performs like it’s breathing.

Minghao. A name built of _bright_ and _great_ , a life already laid out ahead of him with characters on a birth certificate.

They’re all here for the stage. Junhui sometimes feels like he’s tagging along.

“Hey, Joonhwi, you used to act, didn’t you?” Chan asks, breaking through Junhui’s train of thought. It’s an innocuous question, nothing attached to it, and Minghao and Soonyoung chorus a ‘ _yea!’_ in response.

Junhui hums in affirmation. “Yea, I did. Why’re you asking?”

“Dunno,” Chan answers, with all the nonchalance of a fifteen-year-old boy. He’s shifted so he’s got his back flat on the floor and legs propped up against the side of a table, and all Junhui can think is how awful that is for his bones. “I read it somewhere and just remembered it now.”

“What’ve you been in?” Soonyoung asks, having quit his complaining to join in the conversation. “I only know that one weird vampire one that Minghao showed me.”

Junhui shoots a narrowed glance at Minghao, who just shrugs and grins, entirely unapologetic. “You’re a menace,” Junhui tells him, before listing off the few films and series he took part in, ticking them off on his fingers as he goes. Soonyoung ‘oohs’ before proclaiming he’s never heard of any of them and that Junhui has to get an acting job in Korea so Soonyoung can watch him.

Somehow, this devolves into a five-minute argument about drama genres and movies, with Soonyoung crying about The Lion King, and Junhui getting dragged in to help Minghao defend _wuxia._ It barely ends when Chan tumbles in with the neutral ground of superhero films.

“Hey, but you’re here now,” Chan points out, eventually bringing them back to the original topic of conversation. He’s unaware of the landmine underneath his feet. “So then…”

“Why’d you stop?”

–

Junhui’s mother doesn’t let him look at the articles.

“There’s no need,” she tells him, “just a lot of people talking rubbish.” Junhui’s not so sure about that and sneaks onto a computer at school, entering the title into the search bar. It’s nothing new to him – people didn’t like the film. There’s an issue with the director though, and the fallout’s not looking like it’ll die down anytime soon.

Junhui sees his name a few times in passing, in the body of articles, gossip websites. “ _I_ _t’s a shame..._ ” he sees, and doesn’t read any further.

Junhui’s not surprised then, days later when the agency announces its closure. When Junhui is asked if he wants a reference for another company, almost guaranteed recruitment, he says no.

His mother, confused, relays it to the executives, asks him why he doesn't want to keep acting. Junhui tells her he wants to focus on his studies and being a teenager. He doesn't tell her he’s done enough damage.

“Well, that’s that,” his dad tells him over the phone when they’ve made it home, pay-outs settled. “You did well out of it at least.”

Junhui’s stepdad is in the kitchen, Fengjun sat up on the counter and picking at the cut vegetables. Junhui calls for him to stop eating them all before dinners ready, and he only gets a childish grin in response before Fengjun turns back to the food and goes for the meat instead.

“It’s been a long time coming,” his father is saying when Junhui turns back to the phone call. “There were all those scandals and articles about that film, right? It was cursed from the start.” That word again, sinking further in again, ink bleeding into the skin, dark and thick and heavy.

Junhui says a quiet goodbye and goes to set the table for dinner.

–

“Stop whining!” Junhui hears, craning his neck to watch as Soonyoung snaps at Mingyu, who’s currently boneless on the floor.

“I’m not!” retorts the trainee in statement, lying straight through his teeth and earning a barely concealed scream of rage in response.

Mingyu’s not the only one at his breaking point – the whole group is shattered, glass shards glittering on the floor. Junhui has no idea how long they’ve been here, the practice room clock stuck on 12:47 ever since he arrived in Korea over a year ago. He’d hazard maybe four hours, but his screaming muscles say nine.

“Seriously, five minutes and I’ll be fine,” Mingyu grits out, and Junhui’s honestly surprised he’s willing to admit he needs a break. Around him, the rest of the group nods enthusiastically at the chance of a break, and Soonyoung concedes with a huff.

“Fine. Five minutes and then back to it,” Soonyoung forces out, looking like it physically hurts him to say it, and a cheer goes up from the other trainees.

With that settled, Junhui collapses onto the ground with a huff, limbs splayed out on the pockmarked wood. Beside him, far more refined, Minghao lowers himself to the ground, back leaning up against the mirrors.

In their line of sight, they watch as Seokmin collapses on to a prone Jihoon, and Junhui winces, despite knowing that Seokmin is the least likely of them to be murdered by Jihoon for doing something like that. The rest of the group is in a similar state of disarray, air thick with laboured breaths. Junhui wrinkles his nose at the rise in humidity, before rolling over onto his stomach to face Minghao.

“It’s too hot for this,” he whines, and even Minghao is too exhausted to react to the childish tone of Junhui’s voice.

“Yea, if only there was air conditioning in here,” Minghao breathes, the closest thing to a vocal complaint Junhui’s heard from him so far.

“It’s winter though,” Junhui points out, “I’d much rather have heating in the dorms than aircon in here.” It’s true; the dorms are miserably hot in summer, and frigid in winter, the lack of decent infrastructure impacting heavily on its residents. More than once, Junhui has found one of the younger trainees curled inside the hot water cupboard. At least here, there’s a level of warmth that comes with the studio acting like a sauna.

“Well then,” Minghao says, eyes slipping shut for a second, “go complain to management. Or get Seungcheol to, they listen to him sometimes.”

Junhui hums, shuts his eyes too. The lights dim behind his eyelids, and he welcomes the moment of rest, before opening them to reach for his water bottle, the water inside warm.

“Oh,” Junhui hears from beside him, as he watches Jihoon squirm out from underneath Seokmin and lie beside him instead. “You have a scar, here.”

Minghao reaches for it, fingers outstretched to point, maybe to poke at the silvery line along Junhui’s arm. There’s an expression of mundane curiosity there, trying to understand what happened here, what lies underneath the marked skin. It’s quickly replaced by confusion, eyebrows knitted together, when Junhui snatches his hand away, like he’s about to be burned.

What Minghao doesn’t realise, is that Junhui is the fire. 

Junhui earns a raised eyebrow at the movement, a hint of defiance against Junhui’s attempts to hide. He’s not sure how he would say it to Minghao – how do you tell someone “ _I’m afraid if you get too close you’re going to get infected, if you’re too near you’re going to get broken as well.”_

Junhui doesn’t say anything of these things, takes the easy way out when Soonyoung calls for them to get back to work. Smiles thinly and presses his palms to the floor to hoist himself up, grabs their water bottles to throw them back by the bags. Trails behind Minghao to their positions on the makeshift stage.

Measured movements; close enough to stay together, far enough to keep him safe.

–

In the middle of the night, the dance studios are empty.

The keys dangle from the side pocket of Junhui’s bag, faith in his abilities in the form of entrance to the space. Abandoned, the chimes of the metal are drowned out by the heavy bass pouring out of the speakers, a wave of sound filling the studio, Junhui in the middle of it.

It’s become muscle memory at this point – something attuned, natural, the shapes of his body in the mirror, the patterns tread into the floor. It’s something he’d approached while acting – the importance of movement on screen, in the mirror, it’s all the same. Here though, in the studio, the genuinity of the empty room, the echo of the bass in his chest, the delirious, exhausted joy – it feels so much truer than schooling his face into monotone.

Sometimes you find something that makes you abandon all reason. Junhui’s heard his mother say this too many times to count. Hears her say it when she sees his stepfather across the room, when picking up Fengjun from preschool, when she squeezes his hand tight on the way to film promotions.

He never quite understood it. But here, lights dimmed, heart loud in his chest as he steps and weaves through choreography, it clicks for Junhui.

Something so true that it chokes you and something so devastating should it be ripped away from you, an elastic band stretched tight. Junhui finds it between the walls of the studio and the mirrors, the footsteps of other students and mentors. ‘ _Something that makes you abandon all reason,_ ’ Junhui thinks, still in the studio at 2 am, still in the studio at 3, choreography videos clogging up his YouTube feed.

It’s fitting then, that as soon as he finds something like this, it takes something else away from him. Equal exchange, he remembers from a teenage obsession with Fullmetal Alchemist, is the only way to keep balance.

A promise of being able to dance for life, to perform on the stage, under the brilliance of the lights – it’s all packaged in a scout’s business card, proclaiming _PLEDIS ENTERTAINMENT_ in black and white lettering. It comes with a price (it always does) – closer to his dream, his goals, but at the cost of home. Ripping it away, somewhere known for somewhere new.

“ _This is how it always ends_ ,” Junhui thinks, facing his mother on the linoleum of the airport floor a month later. “ _With despair and broken bones.”_

Junhui’s bag sits at his feet, his life packed into twenty-five kilos of carry-on luggage and a backpack. Behind her, his dad and brother stand, twin smiles on their faces, evidence of a love that transcends every bit of bad luck Junhui has ever burdened his mother with.

“It feels like everything is splitting in half,” Junhui says, ticket in his hands heavier than paper should be. The lights of the airport are harsh, and she has to squint when his mother leans in, tiptoeing to meet his eyes.

“Well then,” she tells him, inescapable happiness bleeding through her wet grin. “Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.”

–

Yao Mingming is a link to home in a strange, unplaceable way. His dialect is unfamiliar, sharper than the Cantonese and rounded Mandarin that Junhui’s mother spoke in. Not quite the measured Mandarin of Beijing and his brother and father either. But he’s a _link_ , no matter how foreign, and he helps Junhui with his Korean, both of them huddled around the bare lightbulb in the dorm kitchen, workbooks full of _hangul._ He’s lively, and they catch onto each other quickly, Junhui finding they’re more similar than not. A blessed relief in the chaos Junhui finds in the trainee system, he clings to Mingming like a drowning man to a raft, cast adrift in unfamiliar seas.

And so it goes – Junhui is thrown into a practice room full of skinny, desperate teens, hungry for the stage, and told to survive, It looks like this – hours in front of the mirror, Korean workbooks piled under his bed. Breakfast and dinner eaten on the floor with the other trainees, straining to catch sounds and translate them into familiarity. In the trainee system there is only work and work and work, and the uncanny bonds formed with each other through mutual experience, blood and bruises and sweat staining the floorboards. Sometimes Junhui will sit in the dark, staring at himself in the mirrors, outlined by the green walls of the practice room. Waiting for the paint to mimic a greenscreen, replace the practice rooms with the stage, payoff.

It’s relieving though, to have something to work towards, where everything can go wrong from so many different factors that it cannot possibly be your own fault, no matter how you justify it.

For a while, there’s nothing. Junhui gets up, helps drag the school kids out of bed, goes to practice with Mingming, and sweats it out until his body is screaming and then keeps going. Rinse and repeat, one day after the other, a blessed routine.

Junhui gradually gets used to being followed by cameras, whether operated by staff or other trainees. On film sets, there is a clear border where the cameras can see, and where you can hide. Here, in the open, there is nowhere to escape to. But slowly, slowly, it becomes the new normal. Something familiar, learned, like muscle memory.

But nothing good ever lasts, Junhui tells himself, not when he’s involved. Not when he curses everything around him, bad luck draped over his shoulders like a too-big coat.

“ _Nothing ever stays,”_ Junhui says under his breath as Mingming walks out of the dorm with packed bags and a ticket back home. _“Nothing will ever be permanent, with you,”_ he says, when Mingming turns to wave goodbye from the open door of a taxi.

“ _You’re nothing but bad luck,”_ Junhui thinks, three days later when Xu Minghao appears.

–

Minghao is quiet and reserved, face hidden behind a thick fringe and yet unflinchingly steady with himself. Junhui would put it down to the language barrier, something achingly solid between him and the other trainees, but there’s something else that puts Junhui on edge.

He’s not sure what about Minghao scares him. Under stage lights, years later, grown and settled, tied together by the wrists, Junhui will understand that being faced with someone so out of their depth and yet so unwavering in the face of the unknown was terrifying because it forced him to face his own shortcomings.

The two of them have always been a study in contrasts, a measure of nature and nurture. Minghao walks into the practice rooms, skinny wrists and acne, and he is the same as Junhui in the eyes of the others. But there is a divide between them, invisible and yet tangible, and it goes like this. Junhui hides. Minghao has already found himself.

There’s not much else Junhui can say about the boy, for pure virtue of having said a total of three words to him and then moving rooms to avoid him.

He knows he wouldn’t be able to answer if asked why he avoids Minghao from the day he arrives. Wonwoo asks him about it, weeks later, and Junhui hadn’t known how to tell him that the closer Minghao gets, the quicker he’ll be ruined. And anyway. Minghao has Mingyu and Junhui has the others and between them there is a rift carefully maintained.

For a while Junhui just watches from a distance. (Or, well, as much as a distance he can keep in the cramped spaces of dorm and the practice rooms.) Casts an eye to the other side of the room where Seokmin is trying to communicate mealtimes with a form of full-body sign language to Minghao, watches Minghao respond in the same way, albeit more reserved. Watches as Minghao fumbles over the shapes in the _hangul_ books dumped on him by the trainee manager, identical to the ones stashed in Junhui’s drawers. Watches as he tries to fit into the new life handed over to him, out of place and divided by language and culture and identity.

Minghao doesn’t quite _settle_ , Junhui thinks, in the middle of a demo choreography that Soonyoung’s been working on. He knows how to meld to his situation, how to work around things. _Adaptable,_ Junhui’s brain supplies, _the opposite to you._ In the past, Junhui’s mother tells him he knows how to settle, and he builds on that, carves a space for himself to belong, wherever he is.

Junhui knows that they are both out of place. Anyone would assume that this is connection enough, similarity enough, to bring them together.

But here is the boiling point. Junhui and Minghao are not Junhui and Mingming.

The latter would have sought out the other whether Chinese or not, two sides of the same coin, similar in more ways than they were different. Junhui and Minghao are only connected by virtue of work and proximity, too different to have ever found the other outside the practice rooms. They both know this.

But sometimes it only takes luck. Under the surface there is this: a language only they know, the fear of being swallowed alive by unfamiliarity. Junhui speaks with words that roll off his tongue with a familiarity that Minghao visibly clutches between desperate fingers.

Junhui is still terrified of ruining him. He’s not sure that will ever change. But beneath that is the knowledge that Minghao does not have a ‘Mingming’. And even further beneath that is Junhui’s desperate, terrified need for connection, aching for home.

It wins out eventually. It always has. The others in the group, who stay by Junhui though everything are standing proof of that.

Junhui knows he shouldn’t be surprised when Minghao startles. Either way, a month after he arrives in Seoul, Junhui sits down beside him with arms full of filled out Korean workbooks and points out the mistakes in Minghao’s work. The looks of relief he gets are next to none, and Junhui looks away, knowing he shouldn’t have avoided Minghao for so long. But now is better than never, and he pushes a book open to the same page, answers filled out.

Minghao will never say it out loud, and Junhui will never bring it up, but there’s an ease that builds between them as Junhui pushes past his fears of ruination. Junhui’s careful to keep the border, but the definition of _distance_ starts to blur and change with each passing day.

Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, but there’s a look of relief in his eyes when Junhui sees him looking over at the two of them. Junhui still doesn’t know how to explain the avoidance; doesn’t think he ever will.

Recently, he’s hoping he won’t have to.

Junhui watches as Minghao grows into his own even more, moves past _adaption_ to some form of _belonging_. Watches as he shifts from hiding behind Mingyu or Junhui, to openly harassing Seungkwan about spreading his skin-care products through the dorm and realising that Jeonghan is warm and fun to nap on.

And Junhui watches, from the doorframe, as Minghao talks to a staff member with a camera in the now-familiar green room. “ _If I’m in Korea and he’s not with me, it’s not gonna work,”_ Minghao says, and sneaks a grin to where Junhui’s standing, wide-eyed, a little guilty.

Seokmin comments on it after the interviews, offhanded and innocent in a way only he can manage. “Isn’t it strange? You’re both so different, but you fit together well.”

Junhui half agrees. They’re not quite the same – never will be, with Junhui’s tendency to do everything on the fly and Minghao, local stickler for rules. But Junhui’s not sure if he’d like it as much if they were exactly the same. Junhui and Mingming clicked immediately, drawn together because of lack of language barrier, and sticking together thanks to matching personalities.

Junhui and Minghao are the result of hard work and forced understanding, two people nothing alike stuck in the same boat and told to find their way back to land.

Years later, Junhui’s mother’s voice filters out of his phone speaker, high pitched and grainy. “You two aren’t opposites,” she laughs about Minghao, when his name comes up, Junhui reminiscing on trainee days. The surety in her voice gives him pause, and Junhui stops tapping at the hotel desk with his fingernails.

“You’re none other than ‘two’,” she says, and Junhui has to hang up so she won’t hear him crying.

–

It’s almost concerning that when the debut date is pushed back again, none of them are too freaked out about it. Well. Not out loud.

If anything, they’re quieter than usual, pressed against each other in the cramped dorm room lounge. Most of the group is on the floor, stretching out sore limbs and leaning up against the furniture or each other. The couch is all teenaged limbs and worn-out t-shirts, six people squished onto a three-person couch. And Jeonghan’s at the back, leaning against the kitchen counter.

The atmosphere is down-cast, and Junhui can’t do much but survey the room, wonder how they’ve gotten this far with everything.

He’s lucky that the combined dream of everyone in this room is stronger than everything currently being thrown at them. In any other context Junhui would find it confusing, the dedication and frenetic energy towards something almost unattainable. But in the trainee system, there is no space for weakness.

“God, we can’t catch a break, can we?” Soonyoung jokes, trying to break the tension. It’s forced, but it draws a few half-hearted laughs from Seungcheol and Mingyu, squashed beside each other on the couch.

“It’s almost like we’re cursed or something,” Chan says, and it sounds far away when the others start joking about their bad luck.

Wonwoo shoots him a look when Junhui mumbles an excuse – something about the bathroom, a glass of water, his phone, _anything–_ slipping out of the lounge. Junhui does not notice the other set of eyes following his escape.

The bunk room is dark when Junhui stumbles into it, curling into the corner against the wall as the words echo over and over and over and over and–

 _It’s a curse, it’s a curse, you’ve cursed them all_ , Junhui’s brain spits, glazed over with ice and cruelty. _You’re bad luck_ , it says, and Junhui’s been believing that for a while now. Hearing Chan put it into words was just external confirmation of his fears that it’s always been his fault, always will.

It’s as if Junhui breaks everything he comes near – his own bones, the lightbulbs in his old dance studio, other people’s relationships, hopes and dreams and goals; anything and everything. It’s as if Junhui's cursed to force decay on everyone close to him, ruination in its rawest form.

A tap on his shoulder breaks him out of his reverie; his own little cataclysm in this tiny, paint-chipped corner of the dorm. With a deep breath, he peeks out from his self-made prison to find Minghao lingering over him, eyes dark in confusion and something else Junhui can’t pick out, heavy and haunted.

“Hyung?”

Junhui flinches, the Korean leaving a bitter taste in his mouth, and Minghao switches code. “ _Ge,_ what’s–“

“Nothing.” Junhui cuts him off, sharp. “Go back to the others.”

He means for it to come off as dismissive, a ploy to get Minghao as far away from him right now, but it comes out sounding plaintive and choked. Junhui swallows down the bile and tucks his face back into the fabric of his old dance hoodie, worn thin with age and wear.

At the very least, when Minghao sits down instead of leaving, he leans up against the metal frame of the bunks facing Junhui. Junhui’s not sure what he would have done if Minghao had sat beside him, skin close enough to feel the heat of shame and fear. Close enough to get infected.

Minghao doesn’t say anything for a while, the ceiling fan whirring in the heat of the room taking the space of words. Silence isn’t a foreign concept between them – Junhui’s brain works at a million miles an hour, but he’s not one to spill it so readily, and Minghao seems to weigh everything he says against an invisible feather. Junhui would rather speak now than keep things silent, but sometimes words are too heavy.

Eventually the silence snaps. It always does, always will, between the two of them.

“It’s okay to feel scared, _ge,_ ” Junhui hears, and the words are so heavy that Junhui is surprised they made it past Minghao’s set of scales. Junhui tries to smother sobs behind his teeth, swallows them down, choking on salt. But in here, bunks empty, in front of Minghao, Junhui is exposed.

Nothing stays hidden here. Nothing is let go either.

Junhui doesn’t shy away, this time, when Minghao crawls towards him, over the disgustingly thin carpet, over the threshold, over the barrier that Junhui has kept painstakingly maintained over years and years. Junhui doesn’t shy away, this time, when Minghao settles beside him like he’s carved a space there to belong.

Junhui doesn’t shy away, this time, when Minghao leans closer, breath melding with Junhui’s own, air shared like secrets.

“It’s okay to feel scared,” and Junhui would agree with him, but Minghao doesn’t know what it’s like to be scared of yourself.

–

With _Chuseok_ in full swing, Junhui finds himself alone in the dorm with Minghao, the other boys visiting their families for the holiday.

It’s not his first _Chuseok_ in Korea, but it’s his first not being lonely. Junhui is usually locked up in the bunk rooms until the others get back, toting snacks and new foods for Junhui to try. This year, their trainee manager had left them with food even before the holiday, and Junhui and Minghao had picked through it, comparing it to _Qingming_ and _Chunjie_ foods. The _s_ _ongpyeon_ that he’d left them with was basically _shuquguo_ , Junhui thought, gluing his teeth shut from the glutinous rice, sticky and messy, and Minghao had laughed as Junhui chased the bean paste on his knuckles with his tongue.

For someone like Junhui, who’s drawn so much to others, it’s relieving to have someone else in the dorms with him, rather than wallowing alone, hoping that he wasn’t going to cause a train to crash with one of the other boys in it. It’s relieving to have someone else in the dorms with him who understands the ache of being trapped behind the borders of another country while the people around you celebrate their families.

Junhui accepts the sacrifice – he’s able to dance, able to sing, able to cling hopelessly to a dream of debut and being able to stay on the stage for longer than a few years of his teenagerhood. They all have, but it’s still difficult. Each of them has given something away, left and regrouped, left their homelands and found an induced sanctuary in each other and the depths of the practice rooms.

On days like this, home is so much farther than the three-hour flight, feeling closer to the miles and miles of unbridged ocean between him and safety, the only link Minghao’s hands and the way his mouth still curls around his vowels the Chinese way.

Junhui shifts under his sheets, duvet flung off and lying crumpled, somewhere on the bunkroom floor. It’s mid-autumn, but it seems like the weather is still hanging onto the last of summer, a heatwave plaguing the inner city. The cold metal of the bunk beds is a relief along with the electric fans, stolen from other rooms of the dorm and plugged into every available outlet.

Junhui cracks an eye open to survey Minghao, tangled in the cotton of the sheets beside him. His hair was dyed blonde a while ago for a showcase, but the roots are starting to grow out, dark and messy. It makes him look a lot younger than his seventeen years, and for a moment Junhui is taken aback at how _young_ they all are. Jeonghan, the eldest of them, is nineteen, and Chan is barely fifteen. They’re all practically children.

A kick to his knee alerts him to Minghao, dark eyes narrowed in the dim lighting of the room, cheek pressed to the pillow. They hold eye contact for a few seconds before Minghao sighs, heavy and tired.

“You’re thinking too much,” Minghao mumbles, rolling over to lay his hand over Junhui’s eyes, palm sticky in the humidity of the room. “Sleep.”

So Junhui does.

–

Routine slips in slowly, finally returning after disruptions and disasters. Junhui gets up, helps drag the school kids out of bed, goes to practice with Minghao, sweats it out until his body is screaming–

Junhui’s used to the cameras now. Minghao’s not, but he’ll learn. He shies away when faced with the lens end, but he’s confident behind it, has an eye for the images on screen. Junhui hands him the camera a lot, giving Minghao a hiding place afforded by being out of sight.

He drags Minghao in front of it often enough though, forcing him to face the fears of being seen, of being seen _through_. Junhui knows that fear well, wears it like it's in his bones, and so he forces at least one of them to work past that.

He wonders what people think, watching the uploaded videos. Watching Junhui drape himself over Minghao, blabber on in accented Korean - Junhui wonders what it looks like to the people who aren’t there, who don’t know what it’s like to cling desperately to the last shred of home you have near. Amid everything, there's that little part of him that keeps from slipping away when he hears _Junhui_ from Minghao’s mouth. Tones perfect, it brackets _Joonhwi_ , whose sounds are thick and clumsy in unfamiliarity. It's so odd, that such a small word can contain so much.

And it’s okay. Routine, familiarity, a sense of settlement slips in. Junhui’s almost able to avoid the all-consuming fear of his very presence causing ruin.

Some days it just sits on his shoulder, an observer, unaffecting. Other days, it seems to swallow him whole, and Jeonghan sits with him in silence until the power grid flickers back on.

That’s where it comes to, when Junhui spends three hours in a recording studio with no progress, disappointment filtering through the headphones. Debut has never been closer, and he can feel it slipping through their fingers with every fumble, every mispronunciation. It’s a bad joke; one step forwards, seven steps back. People say there’s splendour in those bright lights, but all Junhui can feel is the harsh heat on the back of his neck. 

That’s where it comes to, when Junhui is told to leave, and flees from the company building to the safety of the dorm. Junhui buries his head in his arms, trying to block out the echoing of voice cracks from where they bounce around, taunting. It’s impossible to ignore.

The truth rarely is.

In the common room of the dorm, the CEO steps over the threshold and delivers a court order, gavel on the stand, _bang_.

An hour later, Minghao asks Junhui to sneak out to the practice rooms with him.

–

Junhui’s voice echoes off the walls, words repeating and repeating and wrapping around the two of them.

And once again they’re silent, both too afraid to step into the void of silence that’s appeared between them. There’s a border again, drawn on the floor in shadow, in fear, in discomfort – straight between them like someone using the vector tool on a computer.

“I have this…thing,” Junhui begins, voice wobbly. “It’s kind of hard to explain though.” Too much goes on inside his head for it all to stay inside, and the pressure has built up to something painful. Silence is his best friend, but he’s never been good at keeping it.

“When I was eight, I broke my arm falling out of a tree. The next week, the entire park was closed down. I was a kid, what did I know? I thought it was a coincidence and never thought about it again.

“It stopped being a coincidence when it just– _wouldn’t stop happening.”_

“When I acted, and did badly in a film, the entire agency collapsed. When I started dancing, one of the competitions I lost had all their funding withdrawn. I thought moving countries would fix it but all I’ve done is cause disaster.” Junhui knows he’s gasping for breath but he can’t stop, just barrels on.

“And just; you _see it_. Things break or people leave and it’s always been my fault. I’ve been trying _so fucking hard_ but every time I make a mistake the debut gets pushed back for everyone else.”

“It’s a curse,” Junhui tells the room, and he’s not sure if he’s talking to Minghao, or himself, or the suffocating depths of bad luck that have made him their home.

Minghao’s looking at him like Junhui’s some special brand of crazy, which Junhui doesn’t put past him. He wonders if this is how the others would look at him if he’d ever tried to explain, if Jeonghan had asked about the power outages and Junhui had told him the truth.

“I used to think that maybe if I thought positively, good things would happen, too. They never did, so I stopped hoping. I’m only bad luck, I think.”

When Junhui slows to a stop, the lack of sound stretches through the room again, isolating and uncomfortable. He’s still trying to catch his breath, having poured out everything possible in as little time as possible - affording it as little air as possible, like trying to keep a flame from growing. Minghao’s still in the same spot, same position, frozen in place; something broken. 

And then Minghao opens his mouth.

“I don’t think it’s a curse,” Minghao starts, quietly, as if trying not to disturb the silence clouding the room. Junhui stares at him for a moment in disbelief, mouth opening to rebut him, to tell him in no surer words that it is. But Minghao beats him to the punch when he continues, his voice still soft.

“I think you’ve just gotten so used to calling it that it’s become one.”

Junhui doesn’t remember when he ended up on the ground, but Minghao’s kneeling to meet him at eye level on the ground, floorboards hard and unforgiving under their knees. When Junhui finally dredges up enough nerve to look him in the eyes, he’s back in the trainee dorms, Minghao’s eyes dark and honest. 

“Once you give something a name, it _becomes that_ ,” Minghao stresses, “You’ve been calling it a curse so long that you can’t see it as anything else.” The bitterness in his voice hasn't left, but it’s not as harsh, more purposeful.

“If something bad happens, something else comes of it, good or bad. That's just life,” Minghao says, and Junhui doesn’t know what to think anymore. 

“Isn’t there anything good that’s come of this?” Minghao asks, and it clicks together in Junhui’s head, like disjointed puzzle pieces.

Junhui sees the screaming in the kitchen, the fighting, the blurs of Beijing traffic; the pearly white bag his mother carries on days on and off film sets. Being taught how to school his faces into different shapes, learning how to hide emotion.

But Junhui sees the new friends in his classes, the bigger park by their new apartment, the joy of having a part to play and carrying through to its resolution. Junhui sees the way his mother would smile when she came home with flowers in her bag from a date, the same flowers in her hands at her wedding, the same flowers on the kitchen table when she came home from the hospital with his new brother and stepfather.

Junhui sees the doors of the acting agency close; Junhui finds himself on the boards of a dance studio, dripping in the mirror.

China to Korea. Motivation turns into exhaustion turns into frustration turns into the power grid turning off for the third time this month.

Mingming disappears.

Minghao appears.

Junhui finds Minghao’s hand, cool on the floorboards of the practice room.

It’s answer enough.

“ _Sometimes you find something that makes you abandon all reason,_ ” Junhui’s mother says, the ghost of her voice echoing around them in the silence, and Junhui hangs onto it tighter.

For once, the quiet isn’t oppressive. It’s just the fan, and their breath, and the faint bustle of the main street far off. Junhui could be forgiven for thinking it was the dance studios in Beijing, but it isn’t, and for once he’s glad for that. 

“ _That’s just life,”_ Junhui thinks, and the room hums in response.

Minghao’s phone rings out, echoing in the hollows of the practice room, and Seungkwan’s voice bounces off the mirrors when Junhui hits accept, fumbling for the button.

The signal in these rooms is spotty at best, and Seungkwan’s voice is distorted by the speaker on the phone and their shaky understanding of Korean. But it’s enough for them to catch ‘ _hyungs!_ ’ and ‘ _self-produced’_ and ‘ _another chance’_ and then the word ‘ _debut_ ’ forces its way through the speakers, golden and tangible.

Minghao tightens his grip on Junhui’s hand, like an anchor, like something to stay grounded with, slender fingers putting soft pressure on the scar that trails up to nowhere.

It feels a little bit like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/animediiac)! comments and kudos keep me fed!


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